The unprecedented impact of the current global health emergency due to COVID has also affected the mental health of millions of people around the world, workers and non-workers alike. Levels of anxiety, fear and social isolation have become widespread as the world struggles to bring the virus under control and find a vaccine. Studies have already shown that one in four of us will be affected by a mental disorder at some point during our lives but given past experiences of pandemic emergencies the World Health Organization expects that this ratio is likely to increase and that the need for mental health and psychosocial support will rocket in the coming months and years. This year’s World Mental Health Day, on October 10th, focuses attention on the need for mental health support for all and calls for greater investment from governments and institutions around the world.
Workplace Options applauds the enormous efforts of our clients and partners worldwide as they continue to invest in employee assistance and wellbeing programs for millions of their employees and family members, especially those organizations who have elected to launch these services for the very first time. For our part we want to ensure that all those in need are able to reach us and our steadily rising call volumes are clear evidence that people are doing just that.
Workplace Options wants to provide the tools and techniques to help individuals take a positive and active approach to prioritizing their own mental wellbeing, but we know that not everyone who needs our services is reaching out to us so. With World Mental Health Day fast approaching, Building Better Mental Health is the latest in our series of free webinars which will be released on Friday, October 9th and prerecorded in multiple languages. The webinar will be available indefinitely, so organizations can access it at any time or day that works best for them. It is key for us to help disseminate these important assets across our client’s organizations in order to create maximum awareness of mental health issues and remove the lingering stigma that is still associated with this.
To meet the continuing and changing challenges of COVID, Workplace Options has remained committed throughout these months to innovation in delivery of services to employees and to our clients. Our free webinars and mindfulness channels have been accessed by tens of thousands of participants, in multiple languages and across different time zones.
At the same time many clients have requested bespoke training programs to target the unique mental health and people challenges faced by those particular organizations. Despite these heightened demands our teams have managed to launch new manager-level training and consulting services, such as ADAPT and AIR 2.0, to meet the unique conditions created by COVID. We can now report that we will soon be adding a brand-new training program to our learning catalogue, aimed this time at individual employees. We see that many people become more concerned about meeting other people’s needs and expectations and end up neglecting their own and it is important to remember that taking care of oneself and managing our health and energy is an essential part of living a happy life. The Healthy Mind Toolkit (for Boosting Your Mental Health) will be a two-hour seminar aimed at teaching participants how to optimize levels of mental health by identifying ways to manage adversity and change, learning practical stress management strategies and develop structured mechanisms for building better mental health.
World Mental Health Day is here to remind us of the importance of self-care and of monitoring one’s health and energy in order to lead a happier life.
